If there is an inherent pretentiousness which [Lou] Reed usually manages to avoid in the role of romantic outcast, chances are that David Bowie … will both seek it out and exploit it. More a masterful manipulator of media than a creditable creative figure, Bowie, whom critic Frank Rose has aptly dubbed "the first space-age bisexual Deco superstar," has fabricated his fame primarily by flitting from one threadbare, mock-serious philosophical stance to another without truly embracing any of them. Sensitive artiste, space baby, glitter queen, neo-Nazi supergod, disco robot, Cabaret cadaver—pick any two and then try to figure out whether any real relationship beyond a chic and timely theatricality exists between them. Is there a happy ending? I don't think so.

While a majority of critics would seem to have wagered their superlatives on the Great Pretender's allegedly uncanny intellect, art-rock lyrics, and avant-garde visual flair, this writer has always found that when Bowie is wrestling with what he feels is an obvious major concept, it is time to leave the room. Except for certain songs ("Space Oddity," "The Man Who Sold the World," "Life on Mars?," "Queen Bitch"), one can dismiss almost the whole of Man of Words, Man of Music (aka Space Oddity), The Man Who Sold the World, the overrated Hunky Dory, Pinups, David Live, and Young Americans. It's not that Bowie is bad perse—he's not; he's always, ah, interesting—but that too often he is capable merely of the kind of arctic and arid brilliance that characterizes the best—and worst—of Stanley Kubrick. The emotions generally get lost in the icy grandeur, and one remembers only the proper pose, not the precise purpose. As a thinker, Bowie is strictly the Kahlil Gibran of delirious decadence … piled up like so many cybernetic cheeseburgers. In the twilight zone of androgynous sex, he has mastered the art of suggestiveness to such a degree that he serves more as an imaginative harbinger of omnisexual excesses yet to be invented than as a practitioner.

Bowie's first four albums are very derivative of Bob Dylan and the Beatles—"Life on Mars?" sounds exactly like "She's Leaving Home" bred with "A Day in the Life"—and most of his themes are at least symbolically present in the dramatic 1969 British hit "Space Oddity": the astronaut-explorer as an extraplanetary superstar who cannot enjoy his fame because he becomes lost in space and feels "there's nothing I can do." ("Star" and "Fame" are similar but inferior songs.) The underrated Aladdin Sane from 1973 is unquestionably Bowie's masterpiece, probably because it is less concerned with cerebral contortions than people, places, and rock and roll music. (p. 330)